


Nightstalker

by Anarchyinplasma



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 12:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14852369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarchyinplasma/pseuds/Anarchyinplasma
Summary: What is being a Nightstalker actually like?





	Nightstalker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheShadowsmiths](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShadowsmiths/gifts).



> One of my favourites I've ever done. Gifted to Shadowsmiths because she's an amazing author whose characters are inspiring.
> 
> How you enjoy.

I feel like being a Nightstalker gets romanticised quite a bit, you know? Sure it’s a cool image, standing there all wreathed in shadow, dark flames kissing your heels with kindness and vengeance, but the reality is so different from that image that it’s kinda unbelievable (it doesn’t help that we’ve almost all done our turns in the Shadowsmiths).

Let me tell you the truth.

Every Nightstalker has a constant, from Yor at one side of the spectrum all the way down to the purest newbie and everyone in between -yours truly included- and that’s the key. We’ve all got damage. Everyone I’ve ever known that’s picked up a bow has lost someone (sometimes even themselves), or they’ve been broken, or they’re just tired; and that’s good.

See for most hunters the bow becomes a kind of coping mechanism, see? The damage takes away the fear for a bit (I’m talking about the fear in the void, the bit that makes it impossible for most people to summon a dusk bow without a lot of effort). They’ll always change back, after a few months, a year at most walking in the shadow, and then they’re back to being heroes of the light. And all that darkness inside, the anger and the hate, the melancholy and the misery. They hunted it down and gutted it.  
That’s where the creed comes from, “We are the rangers, the keen eyed scouts who stalk the Darkness where it dwells”. 

Darkness will always dwell in the hearts of men.

(I know it sounds like I’m putting a downer on these kinda things, but I’m just speaking my mind with a dash of realism. That’s all.)

But then there’s people like me.

I’m a pure-blood, I can’t change. If you’re gonna ask me what that means, it’s simple. I’m not ever healing. Void is in my head, my heart, my veins (“what’s my damage?” well… my cloak isn’t my own).

See, it’s like this.

Gunslingers, they’re simple. Handful of golden bullets that will “solve” every damn problem the universe will throw at them -Cayde-. Bladedancers, and the Arcstriders -aren’t they making a return eh?-, they’re just vain, it’s all about style, swish, flick, slice, etc. No point fighting a universe-spanning power of hatred and suffering if you can’t look cool while killing it right?

We’re a little different, people like me.

To give it to you straight, we’re gonna lose. We don’t know a first thing about this damn conflict to start, let’s be honest. We’re a bunch of puppets, strung along in service to a war against a rival god. That’s just the way things are.

That’s what being a Nightstalker is, playing the Devil himself at a game you don’t know, when the rules are unavailable and even if you could get your hands on them they’re written in a language you’ve never seen, all the while he’s making two moves to your one and your soul’s on the line, betting for what amounts to a gold-plated data-stylus. But you’re still gonna survive on your intuition alone.

Bladedancers call us slow, Gunslingers say we’re imprecise. We take our time because we can’t afford to make mistakes.They can laugh all they like until they’re knee-deep in Hive and my bow is the only thing keeping their silly little golden six-shooter from fizzling out like a candle in a hurricane.

See we make things easy for everyone else, if we do our job well they never notice. If we don’t, well we get shouted at once we’ve fished them out of hive-muck kicking and screaming by the scruff of the neck. With bite marks in your gear, your cloak missing, your cannon jammed up with muck and multiple puncture wounds. And they’re gonna sit there while you have to cap yourself in the head for a reset from ghost.

And all that loneliness, all that hate, that misery and misfortune and grief and torture, that’s what lets you spin a singularity out of your fingertips on a ribbon of light and stick it in the heart of a dead god to make sure he’s really dead and everyone else keeps breathing. You’re gonna go through times when you forget what colours are, sitting in darkness in a cave on some backwater planet surrounded by death and ash, then you’ll get back to your glittering silver city and you’ll want to be back out in the mists because that’s home.

Still up for it?

Awesome, welcome aboard.


End file.
